The Inhabitants is a 2015 American horror film, written and directed by the Rasmussen brothers, starring Elise Couture and Michael Reed. The story concerns a young couple that moves to a very old house somewhere in New England, only to discover that the place hides a dark and mysterious past.

Although the plot is simple, and the story initially could be seen to inattentive viewers as just another haunted house movie, the final result turned out to be very good, especially when it comes as a product of the Rasmussen brothers, usually more associated to cheap and horrible productions. Being told in a calm and decent manner, with a well-paced, cohesive storytelling, in a profusely dark atmosphere and a very coherent and realistic point of view, the movie comes as a surprisingly good result, showing a decent degree of seriousness and professionalism, as well as an impressive increase in their artistic optics of making movies.

The movie tells us the story of a young couple, that buys and ancient house in a distant New England place. When the husband suddenly has to go on a business trip for a few days, when he returns, he finds his wife has adopted a strange and incomprehensible behavior, being increasingly frigid, distant and indifferent to him. With a strong desire to find what’s going on, he discovers mysterious things about the house they now live in, and unfolds a horrible way to the truth in the previous owner of the place, an old lady gone insane, that now lives in a mental institution. As he discovers the horrible truth about the house, he finds himself and his wife to be in great danger, although it is possible that it is too late for him to save his wife from the house’s dark influences.

After their previous movie, Dark Feed, turned out to be disastrous, The Inhabitants proves itself to be a great degree of experience for the Rasmussen brothers, that seems to be leaving a mediocre and amateur category of filmmaking, to step high into a semi-professional degree of excellence in the movie industry, showing a great pace of evolution in the process, especially when it comes to focus, and the way they told the story. The actors in this movie are also way more skilled, to the point they do not disappoint the audience, in any moment. Technically, there are several improvements as well, especially when it comes to camera motion techniques, and the cinematography, stylistically realistic, compelling to high standards and convincing.

Do not misunderstand me: this movie will not blow you away; it is not very different from a lot of things that you have seen before. But, if you were familiar with the work of the Rasmussen brothers, you will get impressed with the jump of quality their work had done here: from a mediocre path of low budget horror flicks, they now seem to have evolved and learned how to do decently good horror movies – also with a low budget (the inherent curse of the horror genre) – apparently assimilating and improving their skills to achieve good results through professional techniques, and a desire to evolve, develop and learn, continually.

The final result of The Inhabitants movie turned out to be very satisfactory! It came out as a very good conventional horror movie. A good, compelling story, no excesses, good acting, attention to details and a great development of the technical devices. Who knows? From mediocre filmmakers, the Rasmussen brothers have now greatly improved their work standards, and they might impress us all with very good movies, in the near future. To their more recent effort, The Inhabitants, they certainly deserve three and a half stars, out of five. For a team of filmmakers that until recently could hardly have one, this is quite an accomplishment! That they certainly deserve.